No riding today...

We had a rough physical training session today (workout for you non-military types) and I have a big presentation for tomorrow, so I decided not to ride. I have a lesson tomorrow and Thursday.

Something I wanted to get down in regards to working on shoulder in and my last lesson, because I was kind of surprised that we were working on shoulder in, it seemed sudden, but then I was reading a shoulder in tutorial on the internet (http://www.geocities.com/gerrypony/shoulder-in.html) and it all made sense after that. You really should read the full tutorial, but I'll recap what we did in lessons leading up to the shoulder in, which really helped it fall into place.

We worked on encouraging Jessie to stay forward and round
We taught him to move off of my leg by sidepassing around the corners of the arena
We used that new willingness to move off the leg to begin sidepassing
Leg yielding to the wall from the quarter line and from the wall to the quarter line
Spiral circles, both in and out, changing the size of the circle, but maintaining the tempo
Counting strides on each half of a circle to see if they match
Learned how to really do a sitting trot

After that, it was easy. Kim explained the aids for the sitting trot, inside leg FORWARD at the girth (very hard for me to do), inside hand a little higher, twist torso to face where his head should be facing, but don't break at the waist when twisting, outside rein pushes the horse toward the inside and the inside hand asks for the bend, the outside leg stays still and heavy, encouraging the horse to bring it's shoulders over, but not really asking for anything unless correction is needed. The inside leg pulses with every step of the inside hind leg, to maintain the impulsion and momentum.

The hardest part was not bringing the horse too far over, the angle just doesn't seem like enough angle when there is the right amount of bend. Additionally, we lost a lot of the impulsion by the end of the wall, but that is due in part to needing to build up the stamina and muscle strength to maintain the movement, both on my part and Jessie's. It was very exciting though, the only thing more exciting than shoulder in will be half pass, but we won't be ready for that for quite some time.

Anyway, just wanted to recap my shoulder in experience, while it was still fairly fresh in my mind. One good thing about this blog is that it gets my thoughts together in one place for my review prior to my lessons.